Australia dropped the ball on submarines says former Home Affairs chief Mike Pezzullo

Mike Pezzullo, formerly the country’s most powerful bureaucrat, says Australia has lost 15 years of critical strategic advantage by ‘dropping the ball’ on submarines in an era of a rising China.

Michael Pezzullo has discussed failures . Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Australia has lost 15 years of critical strategic advantage by “dropping the ball” on submarines in an era of a rising China, says Mike Pezzullo, formerly the country’s most powerful bureaucrat and author of the 2009 defence white paper.

Breaking his silence on the issue of submarines for the first time, Mr Pezzullo said the Defence Department and governments from both sides of politics would be judged harshly for their failure to build more Collins-class submarines when they had the chance. “Defence should have been held accountable for this from mid-2009 … that was 15 years ago,” Mr Pezzullo said.

“So has Australia dropped the ball? Have we lost a decade? Yes, at the very least a decade, arguably as much as 15 years (because) that white paper was 15 years ago.”

In his first major interview since being forced out last Nov­ember as the long-serving secretary of the Home Affairs Department, Mr Pezzullo told journalist Paul Maley’s Meridian100 global affairs podcast, released Thursday, that a larger fleet of newer Collins-class submarines would have been a “natural stepping stone” to nuclear-powered subs.

Mr Pezzullo was lead author of the 2009 defence white paper under the Rudd government that called for Australia’s fleet of six conventional Collins-class submarines to be doubled.

Neither the Rudd-Gillard Labor governments or the Abbott-Turnbull Coalition governments acted on the plan, leaving Australia with its current fleet of six ageing Collins-class boats.

“It is to be regretted and history I think will be a harsh judge,” Mr Pezzullo said of those political ­failure and lost years.

“(We) could have gone to (more) Collins because it still would have been quite new then … and ultimately mixing it with successor nuclear boats that would leave us in a much better state than we find ourselves with the Collins workhorses (now) having to be extended and 50 years old by the time (nuclear boats arrive).

“The thing that kills you in strategy, and certainly in defence planning, is lost time; regrettably we’ve got too much lost time that one day must be accounted for.”

Mr Pezzullo, who was secretary of the department of immigration and border protection and then home affairs from 2014 to 2023, said it was frustrating to watch the indecision on subs in that lost 15 years. “We’ve had constant backtracking reviews, reviews on reviews, and all that means is that you lose … time (that) is crucially important,” he said.

Mr Pezzullo said the “urgency and imperative” which the Ukrainians and others are discovering is needed to defend themselves in a conflict is a mindset that doesn’t seem possible in peacetime Australia “because the emphasis is on oversight, reviews, check the homework again, let’s change our mind, let’s void this contract.”

Mr Pezzullo stood aside as Home Affairs secretary last Nov­ember after a review found he had breached the Australian Public Service Code by making partisan interventions during the 2018 Liberal Party leadership spills.